Monday, September 21, 2009

There is a video of the large group session that covers union membership, HR and payroll, and other information related to successful TAship. If you go to view it at the group showings on Friday, September 25, it will count towards your 5 hours of required training. After that, you can watch it on Youtube, but no points for attendance...

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If you missed the general orientation session, you can view the session on video and receive credit at either of these times:

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Active learning, making students responsible for their learning and helping them do so through guided experiences, has been shown to have positive impacts on student learning (and is a lot more fun to teach or TA than....inactive learning).

The Carleton Department of Geography and Environmental Studies TA Mentorship Program is offering a workshop called Taking the Next Step: Making Tutorials and Labs into Active Learning Experiences.

Small group learning sessions in DGES provide opportunities for in-depth coverage of course material, teach hands on skills, give direct experience of phenomenon under inquiry or a combination of these. This means that geography and environmental studies is already “most of the way there” in promoting an active learning environment. This workshop will focus on how YOU as the teaching assistant can set up, coach and debrief laboratories and tutorials to tease out their learnings and help your students put the insights from these assignments into context. Using the Experience ⇒ Reflection ⇒ Abstraction ⇒ Generalization model, we will explore how to access powerful learning opportunities by processing student work with them (not just handing back near-forgotten assignments).

Active Training: A Handbook of Techniques, Designs, Case Examples and Tips by Mel Silberman and Carol Auerbach (1998, Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer). This book is a revelation and although applying its techniques to learning disciplinary content needs to be thought through carefully, the chapters on preparing effective lectures, finding alternative methods to lecturing and using experiential learning approaches should be required reading for course instructors and teaching assistants. Available online through the Carleton Library: http://www.netlibrary.com.proxy.library.carleton.ca/AccessProduct.aspx?ProductId=26039.

Carleton DGES TA Mentorship Blog

This site is to provide info and support about being a Geography and Environmental Studies TA, as part of Carleton University's TA Mentorship Program. Watch this space for training and professional development opportunities, info about grad school and teaching, and other tidbits. For more info, to give comments or ask questions, e-mail geographyTAmentor@carleton.ca